


Pulled Back From the Edge of Nowhere

by Spoodlemonkey



Category: NCIS: New Orleans
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Angst, Author plays fast and loose with Pacific Rim timelines, First Time, Happy Ending, M/M, Minor pairings - Freeform, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Probably includes entire NCIS: NOLA cast
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 15:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13767360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spoodlemonkey/pseuds/Spoodlemonkey
Summary: Three years after the first Kaiju made landfall Chris talks Cade into signing up for the Ranger program.or alternatively: Pacific Rim/NCIS: NOLA crossover because why not?





	Pulled Back From the Edge of Nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I've been dying to try my hand at a Pacific Rim AU for ages now...so here it goes! I'm kind of throwing the timeline out the door and making it up as I go a bit and meshing little pieces of NCIS: NOLA cannon into the universe. It is a WIP that I'm still typing up, so let me know what you think!

There’s something about the Kaiju that attracts thunderstorms. It never seems to rain like this, the sky as black as night as sheets of rain pound against the con pod, like a Kaiju’s fist, like at any moment it might break through. Thunder cracks across the sky, lighting up the monster before them in every horrific detail before they’re cast back into the dim light of Alabama Brawler’s headlights. The beams barely cut through the monsoon, catching the odd movement and doing little more than making them an even larger target.

“Cut the lights!” Cade calls just as Chris thinks it.

The world outside goes absolutely, frighteningly still. He squints. Lightning tears across the sky, followed a moment later by thunder he can feel through the heavy metal of the Jaeger. Outside the waves rise up higher and higher but the Jaeger is unmoved.

“Get ready!”

Chris tears his gaze away from the storm, back to the radar. He smirks.

Talonback bursts from the water and right into the spikes protruding from Alabama Brawler’s fists. They spear right through its jaw, its cheeks. Chris and Cade move without a thought, bring the other fist up and down and a moment later the Kaiju is still, hanging from their grip.

“It’s down!” Chris crows and back home cheers burst through their radios. “We’re coming back in.”

 

::

 

He’s 19 when the first Kaiju makes landfall.

Those six days are filled with anxiety and fear and realizing that they’re not as alone as they think.

The entire town spends it glued to their televisions. He ventures out once or twice, but all of the stores are closed, the roads deserted. The silence presses in in the empty streets, the vacant buildings. An entire town disappeared overnight. It’s like they’ve already lost, been driven out of their homes by this monster straight from Lovecraft's imagination.

The week ends though, and with heavy casualties the monster is destroyed.

But the question remains, what if there are more?

It turns out there are.

Three years after the first Kaiju made landfall Chris talks Cade into signing up for the Ranger program.

The Jaegers are still pretty new, all anyone can talk about and Chris just knows that they need to get up there, get into those cockpits and get their chance to fight back. He’s never been one to just sit back and wait for someone else to step up to the plate.

From the sheer amount of new recruits that join up with them it's clear that he’s not the only one thinking that way. It’s not going to stop him from showing them that he’s the best and brightest of the lot.

Training is grueling, sunrise to sunset they train, try to prepare for the next attack as best as they can. He falls into bed every night aching, exhausted, fighting back the feeling of defeatism that threatens to crawl over him, suffocating, only to go through it again. He shares a room with Cade in the bowels of the California shatterdome, only sees the sun when they’re running drills outside, barely has time to call his parents back home in Alabama who would like nothing more than for them to come home, come back to them.

Seven months into training a category two appears in the gulf of Mexico. They send down one of their Jaeger’s to help, Alpha Stripes. The United States has three Jaegers, two named and piloted and a third one, shiny and new, just waiting for its pilots.

The category two goes down. So does Alpha Stripes.

The pilots manage to eject in time, picked up by the coast guard, healthy and whole, but Alpha Stripes sinks to the bottom, torn to pieces and left to be scavenged. It looks like the copilots, the Prides, will get the new Jaeger, but in the aftermath Linda Pride retires, and they’re left with only one functioning Jaeger team.

Suddenly it’s even more pressing to get pilots for the new Jaeger.

They spend their days in the Kwoon, running through Kata’s telling themselves they’ll bend more, they’ll be more receptive to their partner, _anything_ to get that call from Marshall Hamilton.

Cade pushes him harder, makes him anticipate his movements, makes him _want_ it more.

A week before Chris’ birthday they step into the conn pod fully suited up as they engage in their first drift.

And it’s perfect.

 

::

 

Until it’s not.

 

::

 

Their third Kaiju kill is a massive category three codenamed Tanker. It’s a pretty apt description. It certainly feels like getting bowled over by a tank when it rams them, knocks them back into the churning water. Something in the conn pod cracks, sparks, and suddenly there’s a thin mist soaking them through their suits and he knows they’re in trouble.

Sniper Echo is out there with them but still re-gaining its feet from the hard hit it took from Tanker so it’s up to them to get themselves out of this mess.He tries to think it through, their brass knuckles as they’ve taken to calling their spikes, are going to be slow and awkward this far under, flares won’t work, but they’ve still got their sword _literally_ up their sleeve. But even as he thinks this, confusion filters across the drift, and the thought slips away like water through his cupped hands. He blinks, vision wavering as he’s suddenly seeing double.

“Cade,” he tastes the cold salt water on his lips. It echoes strangely in his ears.

He’s having trouble feeling his brother in the drift when there’s something else there, getting stronger and stronger, and his chest is tight, mind swimming, and he doesn’t know what’s happening.

He twists his head and Cade is still there but there’s something _wild_ in his eyes when he meets Chris. Something, if he’s honest, that has been there for the past year.

_Not now_ he thinks, begs.

“Brawler,” Tony’s voice echoes through the conn pod. “You guys need a hand?”

“Hell yeah,” he tears his gaze from Cade as Tanker is ripped away from them by the recovered Sniper Echo. He pushes back against the drift to get them moving even as it feels like Cade is slipping away from him. He grabs on as tight as he can, gets their feet underneath them and gets the back to the surface.

Sniper Echo has a hold of Tanker even as it squirms and slams itself against the sturdy form of the other Jaeger. Chris thinks _sword_ and even as it’s unleashed something between them _snaps_ , stretched too thin. Cade shouts, the pain bouncing back and forth between them like a terrible feedback loop.

He manages to finish it. Runs Tanker through with the sword but by then it feels like his head has split open. His nose and ears feel wet. The pain is a physical thing trailing down his spine like wildfire, spreading further and further until it’s just easier to give in to it.

 

::

 

He opens his eyes and immediately wishes he hadn’t.

Even the dim light above him is enough to send lightning tearing across his skull, nausea roiling in his stomach. He keeps it down, just barely, biting his lip and breathing as steadily as he can against the rising tide.

Sounds filter in eventually, the steady beeping of a heart monitor, the quiet hum of the shatterdome. He finds it in himself to try again, cracking his eyes open just enough. The light still hurts, as he squints up at the ceiling, but more like a gentle pounding than the lightning storm it had been initially.

He’s in the infirmary, not a surprise considering what he can remember. He tilts his head and the sight of Cade in the bed next to him quells the rising panic. He looks like he’s sleeping soundly, turned on his side towards Chris even in his sleep. But there are dark circles under his eyes, lines  that weren’t there before, or maybe they were and Chris was just too caught up in all of the action and glory that he didn’t even notice in the drift. Cade’s his drift partner, his _brother_ , he should have noticed something was wrong sooner.

But he thinks he must have, and just didn’t want to acknowledge it.

“How are you feeling?” The lights are dim, the infirmary empty, it must be either very late or very early. But the man standing in the doorway doesn’t let on, crossing to stand at the foot of Chris’ bed. Dwayne Pride, he’d know the man anywhere. One of the first Jaeger pilots, now Marshall Hamilton's second in command and recruit trainer. They’ve barely said more than a few words to each other, their paths not crossing as often as one would think, but Chris would be able to pick Pride out in a crowd any day.

“Like I got hit by a bus.” He sounds like it too, his voice rusty. It makes him wonder how long he’s been under; it must show on his face because Pride pulls up a chair, settling in next to his bed like they’re old buddies.

“You’ve been out for a day.” He explains, glancing over at Cade’s sleeping form. “Your brother less but they had to sedate him.”  
“What?” He struggles to sit up, muscles screaming at him in a reminder that it wasn’t just his head that took a pounding. Pride levels him with a look that has him sinking back down into the pillows reluctantly. The relief on his body is instantaneous though. “Why?”

Pride sits forwards, resting his elbow on his knees. His gaze is sad, but not pitying, warm, as he holds Chris’.

“Seems the strain of the drift has been too much for your brother.” He pauses, glancing around the infirmary. “I should get the doctor, let her explain it.”

He makes to get up and Chris’ hand shoots out, catches his before he can step away.

“After.” Pride freezes and Chris drops his hand. He can’t explain it, just that he isn’t ready for the other man to leave just yet, even to get the doctor. Everything is still around them, fragile. The doctors are going to dress it up for him, are going to give him facts he can’t wrap his mind around. Pride has been in the drift, he _knows_ in a way all those doctors don’t.

Pride settles back into his chair, expression thoughtful.

“Tell me what you can.” Chris pleads.

Pride doesn’t say no.

 

::  


It turns out Cade, along with the drift putting too much strain on his mind for him to handle, is suffering from PTSD.

And Chris never noticed.

But Cade had known and had managed to keep it out of the drift long enough that it had started causing serious problems, all building up to the breaking of the drift during their fight with Tanker.

He’s released from medical the next morning; Pride had left him in the early hours of the morning to sleep off his headache and the doctors had checked him over, and promptly kicked him out of bed to get a shower and something to eat.

Cade had still been asleep when he’d left, still out on a light sedative to give his mind a chance to rest after being all but crippled in their drift. Chris barely manages to drag himself back to their quarters, scrub down and change. He skips the mess hall, grabs a tasteless granola bar from their stash and hurries back.

Cade wakes up around lunch, dazed and a lot out of it but he recognizes Chris. The relief he feels at the recognition in his brothers eyes nearly sends him to his knees. He’s heard horror stories of pilots lost to the drift; the fear that he’d lost his brother because he’d been too caught up to notice had been visceral.

Cade’s gaze meets his and skitters away and Chris knows it’s never going to be the same.

But he bites down the self loathing and guilt and disappointment and reaches out, grasping his brothers hand, squeezing it tight.

“We’re okay.” He says, more for Cades ears than his own, because despite what Cade may think it’s _Chris_ that failed. But he knows what his brother needs to hear now and he can give that at the very least.

Cades eyes are bright with unshed tears and he clenches them tight but his hand squeezes Chris’ back.


End file.
